“I think stick a fence six feet high with signs on it in both English and Spanish and it says ‘if you cross this border, this is the American border, you cross it, we’re going to shoot you.’”

“You cross my border, I will shoot you in the face ... I’ll volunteer to go down there and stand on that border for, I don’t know, a week or so at a time and that’ll be my civil duty.”

The racism is heinous.

“Somebody who lives in my condo association that has five kids, and it’s her and her husband with the five kids and the mother, the grandmother of the kids, and they don’t have jobs, they’re there all the time — I bet you can guess what color they are — and they have no job.”

“I believe wholeheartedly ... the black race as a whole ... is lazier than the white race, period.” And that black women “think that breeding is a form of government employment.”

The bigotry is explicit.

“Rhode Island, land of more liberals, has just OK’ed, gay marriage ... Congratuf’in’lations, you suck, Rhode Island. Why would you do that? Go ahead and twist the knife a little, little bit more ... you are breaking the morals, the moral fiber of our country. You know, I don’t like gay people. I just don’t.”

“I just don’t like Muslim people. People always rip me a new one for that. Carl, you’re racist, you can’t, you’re sexist. I’m like Jesus Christ. I just don’t like Muslim people because their ideology sucks.”

And there’s the misogyny.

“Nothing gets me going like Ted Cruz, when he went off on the Feinstein Bitch about the Second Amendment and he put her in her place ... That was just fantastic. I can’t stand that woman. She’s another one. Her and Pelosi. I’d love to just take both their heads and smack them together a couple of times.”

These are among Carl Higbie’s many hateful statements made in radio broadcasts during 2013 and 2014, uncovered last year by CNN. Higbie, a former Navy SEAL who grew up in Greenwich and currently lives here, had to resign his Trump-appointed post as chief of external affairs for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) last January when his vile statements came to light. Higbie, a spokesman for the Trump-aligned Great America PAC during the 2016 presidential campaign, currently hosts a program on America’s Voice News, a digital entertainment and news network.

Why, we must ask, are Greenwich First Selectman Peter Tesei and one of Greenwich’s state legislators, Fred Camillo, welcoming this purveyor of hate to Greenwich Town Hall for the launch of an America’s Voice News series of town meetings?

Greenwich Time quotes Camillo as acknowledging the “horrible things” Higbie has said, but with the qualification that this was “many years ago.” Camillo believes Higbie’s program will encourage respectful, bipartisan discourse.

But four years, even five, is not that long ago. Moreover, as recently as June 2016, Higbie said people who receive government assistance (presumably those lazy black people that he’s characterized, especially the women who “breed” for welfare checks) shouldn’t be allowed to vote in the subsequent election.

In November 2016, Higbie advocated for a Muslim registry, citing the internment camps for Japanese Americans during World War II as a precedent.

I sent Tesei an email on Wednesday in my capacity as former chair of the First Selectman’s Diversity Advisory Committee now headed by Pamela Toper. I expressed concern that he undermines his committee’s efforts to combat bigotry and promote diversity: “I would hope that you would see it as an opportunity to reinforce the work of your diversity advisory committee by denouncing all forms of bigotry, including Higbie’s earlier statements, and proclaiming that such attitudes and speech have no place in Greenwich.”

In his email response, Tesei agreed with my statement, but also suggested “restorative justice and rehabilitation” for those who engage in such speech.

But is Higbie repentant?

Hardly. He walks back last year’s apology and continues to say offensive things.

“... transgender is a pretend thing ...” he recently tweeted.

Tesei needs to do the right thing. He must deny Higbie the town’s imprimatur.